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Ray Davies of The Kinks announces that he is retiring

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The Kinks appear at The Great Western Express festival at White City, west London. Ray Davies wife having recently walked out of their marriage, taking their young children with her, Ray Davies of The Kinks announces from the stage that he is sick of the whole thing and is retiring. He then walks into a local hospital and collapses from an overdose of tranquillizers.

In 1973, Ray Davies of The Kinks dived headlong into the theatrical style, beginning with the rock opera Preservation, a sprawling chronicle of social revolution, and a more ambitious outgrowth of the earlier Village Green Preservation Society ethos.

In conjunction with the Preservation project, The Kinks’ lineup was expanded to include a horn section and female backup singers, essentially reconfiguring the group as a theatrical troupe.

Ray Davies marital problems during this period began to affect The Kinks adversely, particularly after his wife, Rasa, took their children and left him in June 1973.

Ray Davies went into a state of depression, culminating in a public outburst during a July gig at White City Stadium. According to a Melody Maker review of the concert, “Ray Davies swore on stage. He stood at The White City and swore that he was ‘fucking sick of the whole thing’. … He was ‘sick up to here with it’ … and those that heard shook their heads.” At the show’s conclusion, as pretaped music played on the sound system, he declared that he was quitting. Sounds magazine reported that Ray looked “haggard and ill” before he kissed Dave Davies “gently on the cheek, and then delivered the bombshell”. Ray subsequently collapsed after a drug overdose and was rushed to hospital. Dave later commented in an interview about the incident:

God, that was horrible. That was when Ray tried to top himself. I thought he looked a bit weird after the show—I didn’t know that he’d taken a whole bloody bottle of weird-looking psychiatric pills. It was a bad time. Ray suddenly announced that he was going to end it all—it was around that time that his first wife left him. … She’d left him and taken the kids on his birthday, just to twist the blade in a little more. … I think he took the pills before the show. I said to him towards the end that he was getting a bit crazy. I didn’t know what happened—I suddenly got a phone call saying he was in the hospital. I remember going to the hospital after they’d pumped his stomach and it was bad.

With Ray Davies in a seemingly critical condition, plans were discussed for Dave to continue as frontman for The Kinks in a worst-case scenario. Ray Davies eventually pulled through and recovered from his illness as well as his depression, but throughout the remainder of The Kinks’ theatrical incarnation the band’s output remained uneven, and their popularity, which had already faded, declined even more. John Dalton later commented that when Davies “decided to work again … I don’t think he was totally better, and he’s been a different person ever since.”

Vintage Retro Music & Retro Pop Culture is our passion and what we LOVE. We keep it going everyday for the love of producing it for you to enjoy. Thanks for viewing. Much Peace! Ray Davies of The Kinks announces that he is retiring in 1973.